Review: Duran Duran, Imelda Marcos and Me by Lorina Mapa

I love reading graphic novels, almost as much as I love reading memoirs, but putting them together is even better. Duran Duran, Imelda Marcos and Me by Lorina Mapa is a graphic memoir about Lorina Mapa's experiences growing up in the 1980s during the People Power Revolution in the Philippines.

It was absolutely fascinating, and done so well. Mapa's starting point for her story is her father's death and her trip back to the Philippines for his funeral. While she tells the story of the aftermath of her father's death, she interweaves flashbacks of her time growing up. I sometimes find that hopping back and forth in time gets confusing, but Mapa does it flawlessly. The present day story line and the childhood story line perfectly transition into each other, in such a way that gives the other story line even more meaning and depth.

I also loved learning more about the People Power Revolution from the perspective of people directly involved. This is why I love memoirs - reading about events from the point of view of people who were there makes them come alive and helps me to realize just how the people involved were impacted and how it is meaningful to them. Mapa's own personal struggles and questioning of big life questions like culture, poverty and family made me think about how complicated history really is. This is my favourite way to learn about history: through the people that lived it.

Duran Duran, Imelda Marcos and Me is a fascinating, well put together story that is narrated by a woman whose insight and questioning of her world makes this book an enjoyable and eye-opening read.

Check it out on:
Goodreads
Amazon.com
Amazon.ca

Review: Sputnik's Children by Terri Favro

This is one of those books that was so good that I don't really want to do a review of it because I want to keep it all to myself. But, at the same time I also want to talk about how great it is and make everyone read it??

I won Sputnik's Children from ECW Press through 49thshelf. (49thshelf always has awesome giveaways and book lists, so if you aren't following that site yet you should.)

Sputnik's Children is about Debbie, who is a comics writer who takes inspiration from her own wacky life as she hops back and forth in time between the present (2011 in the book) and around the 60s. But it also has two parallel universes of the 60s - one that happened as it did in our world, and the other which Favro calls "Atomic Mean Time" where all the rights movements never happened and everything was a lot closer to nuclear war. And it's up to Debbie to save the entire world from nuclear destruction.

It's SO FUN. I don't think I've ever read an adult fiction book that is as fun as Sputnik's Children. I just whizzed through it. Debbie is great, the time travel is great, the sci fi elements and parallel universes are great.

Before I got the book, I read a blurb somewhere that said it is "genre-bending" and I had no idea what that was supposed to mean. But after reading the book I get it - it's kind of sci-fi with all the time travel and parallel universe stuff, but there are also longer sections in between the time travel that are just about Debbie living her life in whatever time period she happens to be in. So there's a lot of stuff about growing up and family and friend dynamics too. I LOVE it, because Terri Favro writes all genres amazingly well and the transition between them is so smooth, and helps to keep the story going forward at a really entertaining pace. Like I already said, this was one book that I did not want to stop reading! It's great if you like contemp, but it's also great if you really need a swift moving plot to keep you engaged.

Even the ending was great, which is hard to pull of with books like this that tackle big things like saving the entire world from nuclear destruction.

I think that pretty much anyone would like this book, so go pick it up now!!

Find it on:
Amazon.ca
Amazon.com
Goodreads
ECW Press

Review of All the Books I Read in 2015

So, every year on my blog I do a review of all the books I've read in the year, usually going over the books I thought were the best, worst, and a few other categories. This year, I wanted to do a more in-depth reflection because it's not always that easy to divide the books I read into best and worst, because each book I read impacts me in a different, unique way.

This year my tastes changed significantly, as they do every year. This year I probably read the most adult books I've ever read in a year, although of course I still read quite a few young adult books. I'm definitely starting to grow out of YA, though. I'm finding it increasingly harder to get into the snarky voices and repetitive drama that tends to appear in a lot of YA. (see: @broodingYAhero)

I started out the year on the right foot, reading a lot of good books, like Cristina Moracho's Althea and Oliver, and Gary D. Schmidt's Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. I also read Catherine Gilbert Murdock's Dairy Queen, which entirely changed my view on what YA should and can be (I really need to read it again).

I also started the year with a commitment to do the Around the World Reading Challenge. I did pretty well with it at the beginning of the year, although the only mini-challenge I was able to complete was reading a book from every Canadian province and territory. Doing that challenge got me into the CanLit world, which is really cool. Now my TBR list is filled with books written by Canadians, and CanLit is on my radar a lot more. I read a ton of really good CanLit this year, which you can read about in my wrap-up post for my Across Canada challenge.

While I didn't read a ton of books outside of Canada or the US, I did read some really good books with international settings. The Taliban Cricket Club by Timeri N. Murari was one of those books, about a young woman in Afghanistan, Rukshana, who, supported by some men in her family, pretends to be a boy to play cricket. I loved the character Rukshana, and it was a great, funny read. And I found it just by pulling it off the shelf at the library, which is not usually how I find books anymore. Another book with an international setting that I loved was Listen, Slowly by Thanha Lai, about a young girl, Mai, going to visit her family in Vietnam for a summer. It had everything I love in MG - cute, spunky characters, lots of awkward silliness, and great family dynamics.

And of course, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea by Dina Nayeri, set in Iran in the 1980s, which was heartachingly beautiful, made me cry, and became my best and favourite book of 2015 and which I will now recommend to everyone I possibly can. (Read my review here).

Unfortunately, at the end of summer and then into the school year in the fall, I kind of ran out of steam for my Around the World challenge and couldn't really get into any books. All the YA books seemed too young or annoying, and the adult books seemed too hard to get into. I think at that point in the year, I wanted an easy read where my brain didn't have to work too hard. I just wanted something that would completely sweep me away and forget reality, and I couldn't find any book to do that. So, I ended up falling back on my favourite books, and reread The Queen's Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner, and The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven King needs to come out like, yesterday).

School this semester sucked all the desire for reading for fun from me, but hopefully with the break I can buy some good books with my Christmas gift cards, get to the library, and get back to actually enjoying reading.

When I look back on this year of reading, I didn't really fall head over heels with very many books, but I read a lot of good books that made me think about different things, which I think is really cool and extremely valuable. I mean, when I look back on the books I read this year, I learned a lot. I learned about...

• The Quebec separatist movement 
• Afghanistan during the Taliban regime
• the Iranian revolution of 1979
• Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail
• What it's like growing up in a Mennonite community
• What it's like to be a Canadian immigrant
• What it's like living in the north of Canada
• How to be an urban cyclist
• Louis Riel and the Red River Rebellion
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his work in the German church and his role in a plan to assassinate Hitler during WWII
• The history of Down Syndrome
• What it's like growing up Aboriginal in Canada
• What it's like to deal with generational and cross cultural clashes
• What it means to wear a hijab
• What it means to be queer
• What depression is like
• How cruel and how amazing people can be

And that's not even everything. I love reading.

Happy New Year! I hope you read lots of amazing books this year. Let me know in the comments or on Twitter what you learned this year while reading!

A to Z Blogging Challenge: Book Review Style

So a few days ago Laura posted about how she's going to be doing the A to Z blogging challenge, except instead of just random blog posts she's going to be posting 26 book reviews. It actually sounds like a cool idea, so I'm going to join her. (Although, it's in April, so things could happen between now and then).

(You can skip the following ramble about book reviews).

I think it's a cool idea. I think I need to do more book reviews, and I think one of the most important things about reading and the online book community is supporting authors. I can't afford to buy every single book that comes my way, but sharing about books I've read leads to more books being bought down the road. It's so important to share book recommendations with people!

However, because of that, I tend to shy away from negative reviews. Actually I usually only post reviews of books that I have fallen in love with, because books I love I just want everyone to read and love as much as I do. But that's not always the case - I'm sure even if I just like or even dislike a book, just by me talking about it they'll pick it up. But if I hate it... I'll just... omit some truth. :)

tl;dr Book reviews are good and I should do more of them so I'm going to!

Laura is reading 26 different books with titles that start with each letter of the alphabet. I'm going to do the same, although not in the allocated time because, to be honest, I just don't feel like putting that much pressure on myself!

So here is my list (I stole some off Laura's list, and some are my own TBR). Recommendations would be awesome!:

All Our Yesterdays by Cristin Terrill
Blackbird by Chuck Wendig
Corked by Kathryn Borel
Doll Bones by Holly Black
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Fragments by Dan Wells
Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers
How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Stanford
Ink by Amanda Sun
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
K
Listening for Lions by Gloria Whelan
Mind Games by Kiersten White
Nobody But Us by Kristin Halbrook
OCD Love Story by Cory Ann Haydu
Prodigy by Marie Lu
Quintana of Charyn by Melina Marchetta
Raven Boys, The by Maggie Stiefvater
Small Damages by Beth Kephart
Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas
Unravel Me by Tahereh Mafi
Vicious by VE Schwab
Wool by Hugh Howey
Xenocide by Orson Scott Card
Year of Biblical Womanhood, A by Rachel Held Evans
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig

I'd love to do a range of genres with this, so recommend anything! And everything's subject to change.

See you in April! (For this, anyway, hopefully I'll get around to posting before that!)